Society and Life

Policy still necessary but can be tweaked

By Li Xing (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-06-01 10:11

When the "cultural revolution" broke out in 1966, major national newspapers called on the 600 million Chinese to join the "great movement of smashing the feudal, the bourgeois and the revisionist ideas".

After I entered junior middle school in 1971, the media were asking 800 million Chinese to continue their enthusiasm in the "revolution".

But my schoolmates did not seem to enjoy their multiple siblings. A schoolmate just had a baby brother - the seventh child in her family. She said almost everything her father earned went to her baby brother.

Our food, clothing and even bicycles were rationed.

When I was a junior in college in 1980, China's population was closing in on 1 billion. It was then that China began serious campaigns to encourage couples to have one child.

Today, a heated debate is raging over how China should ease its three-decade family planning policy to help alleviate problems of a rapidly aging society and shortage of labor.

Some have condemned the policy altogether, but I don't think the attack is fair and objective, especially when many of the critics benefit from the policy.

China was simply unable to sustain the national economy and population growth at the same time. China only has 7 percent of the world's arable land, but 22 percent of the world's population. And the country is plagued by shortages of water and other resources.

Yet it wasn't these numbers that mattered to Chen Jingquan, my uncle-in-law, who was entrusted to promote family planning in 1971 in the rural county of Zhijiang in Central China's Hubei province.

He had a population of nearly 420,000 to manage. A lot of people told him it was a lowly job, invading family privacy. Above all, no one had ever tried.

But he had the local numbers on his fingertips: A deputy township official surnamed Cao had 13 children, and the small village where his family resided had 30 families with 50 laborers. My uncle said a large portion of the village's earnings went to support Cao's family, and the village didn't have extra cash to boost production.

In another survey, Chen found 90 percent of the rural households with three children owed money to the villages.

Above all, he told farmers, rain and snow fall from the sky, but not food. The population can grow, but the fields will not expand.

These numbers persuaded a lot of farmers to consider controlling the number of births, Chen said.

Before 1971, 85 percent of the rural households in Chen's county had three or more children. In 1982, only 1 percent of newborns were from families with more than two children.

Anyone with objectivity should acknowledge the benefits of the family planning policy.

China has seen 400 million fewer births in 30 years, which has resulted in 18 million fewer tons of CO2 emissions a year, according to Zhao Baige, vice-minister of National Population and Family Planning Commission of China.

I support the easing of the policy, but planning is still necessary if we want to lead a prosperous yet sustainable life within the means of our natural resources.

Li Xing is China Daily's assistant editor-in-chief and chief US correspondent.

(China Daily 06/01/2011 page10)